Commonwealth Bank potential data security breach – because the Banking Royal Commission was not embarrassing enough

It is not a good time to be a banker! With the Royal Commission into Misconduct in Banking shining a spotlight on misconduct, incompetence, and the necromantic practice of charging dead customers, you would think the banks would be keeping their heads down.

The Commonwealth Bank it seems did not get the memo, this week admitting to a potential data breach affecting an estimated 19.8 million customers' accounts (presumably every single Commonwealth Bank customer).

Background

In 2016 the Commonwealth Bank contracted Fuji Xerox to decommission one of its data centres.

This process involved the destruction of magnetic tapes used for backing up data. The tapes included 16 years' worth of bank statements with customer names, addresses, account numbers, and transaction details.